news 2014

The integration of digital expert knowledge and automation of risk analyses can greatly improve software test procedures and make cloud computing more secure. This is shown by the latest results of a project of the University of Innsbruck, funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, on the quality assurance of security critical systems which have recently been published.

Ion channels are involved in many physiological and pathophysiological processes throughout the human body. A young team of researchers led by pharmacologist Anna Stary-Weinzinger from the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Vienna investigated how ion flux through a voltage gated sodium ion channel works in detail.

Quasiparticles can be used to explain physical phenomena in solid bodies even though they are not actual physical particles. Physicists in Innsbruck have now realized quasiparticles in a quantum system and observed quantum mechanical entanglement propagation in a many-body system.

The great Viennese logician Kurt Gödel studied statements which refer to themselves - and his results shook the foundations of mathematics. "All Cretans are liars", said Epimenides, a Cretan. But this means that his statement must be a lie too. But then it is false that Cretans are liars and the statement must be true.

The field of artificial intelligence is progressing. TU Vienna is a major center of this line of research. Several conferences on this topic will be held during the "Vienna Summer of Logic". The ball does not fit into the suitcase, because it is too small. What is too small? The ball or the suitcase? For humans the answer is evident, but computers still cannot handle such simple questions.